Advertising is a pervasive fact of today's world. It seems as if it appears everywhere and advertisers are always looking for new ways to get their message across and attract the attention of target audiences. Indeed, industries have grown up around advertising in various media, including new, specialized media, as well as around new ways of advertising, product placement, and so on.
It has long been known that subways and trains present an advertising opportunity. A subway or train is filled with passengers and they often go through tunnels not visible to the outside world. This means that signage in such tunnels presents a rather unique advertising opportunity. A sign in such a location will have a captive audience as riders pass by it. Locating signage in such tunnels will not generate the same types of concerns that often arise in connection with billboards and other signage in open, public places, which often is subject to regulation. However, there are some difficulties with such signage, such as access for changing the signs and lamps, size and the need to catch the attention of riders, especially when they are passing through a tunnel at a relatively high rate of speed.
One idea that has been around for quite some overcomes the smearing effect of a speeding subway train to create the appearance of a stationary picture, which can be a still image or animated, by use of a series of fixed still frames. This can be analogized to motion pictures in the pre-digital age when motion pictures relied upon a series of still photographs on film projected in rapid succession onto a screen by a movie projector, which, with persistence of vision, produced the effect of moving images. However, unlike motion pictures, the screen in a subway tunnel is not fixed. It is, instead the movement of the train past a series of pictures fixed on the subway wall that is roughly analogous to the movie projector by providing the rapid succession of images to the viewer. This means that the series of pictures must be correctly positioned on the subway wall, and lighted, and if animated, the pictures must be created to take into account the speed of the train relative to the fixed images to display the animated commercial at the correct speed. This, in turn, has created many challenges, and a great many inventors have sought to address such challenges for a long time.
For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 2,299,731, issued in 1942, a display system for moving vehicles is described which provides for illumination of a series of displays by successive brilliant flashes of light of extremely short duration. Roughly thirty years later, stroboscopic systems for display were disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,694,062 and 3,951,529 while U.S. Pat. No. 3,704,064 disclosed a flash tube for use in a subway signage animation system. One of the problems with such systems was high cost, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,393,742, issued in 1983, sought to reduce such cost by using a sensor to measure the velocity of a train and then initiate the flash cycle based upon the results of the sensor. Another problem with such systems was the triggering mechanism for illuminating the series of displays, and one invention directed to this problem is U.S. Pat. No. 5,108,171, issued in 1992.
With the dawning of the new millennium, a number of new patents have issued in the art of subway signage. U.S. Pat. No. 6,169,368 discloses the use of a sensor to activate a controller upon the approach of a train to trigger an electronic display mechanism controlled by a computer. U.S. Pat. No. 6,353,468 discloses use of flat screen LED monitors in the display. U.S. Pat. No. 6,466,183 discloses a video display apparatus. U.S. Pat. No. 6,870,596 discloses a subway movie/entertainment medium and news reports indicate that the company which owns this patent, Sidetrack Technologies Inc., has installed its system in a number of subways throughout the world.
Thus, it is clear that there is a need and demand for subway signage systems and this is a medium of advertising that has drawn considerable attention, including commercial attention, over the years.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,564,486, issued in 2003 to Spodek et al. (“Spodek”), an approach to subway signage is disclosed which is analogous to a zoetrope for use in subway signage systems in an attempt to overcome problems associated with stroboscopic displays, such as timing. Spodek uses a display in which a series of still pictures are viewed through a slitboard mounted between the images and the viewers in a train. The details and math associated with such a display are discussed in rather great detail in Spodek and will not be repeated herein, but simply incorporated herein by reference for use as part of the background to the present invention. The technology of Spodek has been licensed to a company named Submedia that has advertising systems that are now located in some of the world's top media markets, including New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Mexico City.
The present invention seeks to advance the art of subway signage by advancing the teachings of Spodek through use of novel apparatus and methods that greatly increases the efficiency and ease of use of subway signage systems according to the teachings of the present invention.